Skip to content
OpenAdvisories
High · 8.7 CVE-2026-43967 EEF-CVE-2026-43967EUVD-2026-28800GHSA-9mhv-8h52-q7q2

Quadratic fragment-name uniqueness check causes denial of service in absinthe

Published May 8, 2026 · Updated May 9, 2026 · Assigned by EEF

Description

Inefficient Algorithmic Complexity vulnerability in absinthe-graphql absinthe allows unauthenticated denial of service via quadratic fragment-name uniqueness validation.

'Elixir.Absinthe.Phase.Document.Validation.UniqueFragmentNames':run/2 iterates over all fragments and for each one calls duplicate?/2, which evaluates Enum.count(fragments, &(&1.name == name)) — a full linear scan of the fragment list. The result is O(N²) comparisons per document, where N is the number of fragment definitions supplied by the caller.

Because input.fragments is built directly from the GraphQL query body, N is fully attacker-controlled. A minimum-size fragment definition is roughly 16 bytes, so a ~1 MB document carries ~60,000 fragments and forces ~3.6 × 10⁹ comparisons inside this single validation phase. No authentication, schema knowledge, or special configuration is required.

This issue affects absinthe: from 1.2.0 before 1.10.2.

Affected products

VendorProductAffectedFixed
absinthe-graphql absinthe 1.2.0 – < 1.10.2 1.10.2

Affected packages

EcosystemPackageAffectedFixedRecord
Hex absinthe >= 1.2.0, < 1.10.2 1.10.2 EEF-CVE-2026-43967

References